As a
general rule of the early Alabama frontiersmen, the administration of justice
was best left in the hands of the local citizens, or when available, with county
officials. Even in the county seats, justice was
swift and harsh, as the towns vindictively encouraged their sheriffs to stage
hangings in the public square. These festive spectacles attracted large crowds
from miles around, eager for the entertainment atmosphere created by the
settlement’s merchants. Floggings, branding, and other mutilation and
humiliation punitive events were also made public. Hanging offenses included
murder, rape, robbery, burglary, stealing slaves, rustling livestock,
counterfeiting, and treason.
On January 26, 1839, under Governor Arthur P. Bagby,
the State Legislature enacted a criminal code that authorized a state
penitentiary system.
By August 21, 1839, after seeking a
location that was central to Alabama, property for a prison was purchased
adjacent to the Coosa River near Wetumpka. In October of that year,
Governor Bagby laid the cornerstone of the Wetumpka State Penitentiary and by
1841 the 208 cell prison surrounded by walls twenty-five feet high was completed
at a cost of $84,889. William Hogan was selected to be Alabama’s first prison
warden.The first inmate entered the Wetumpka
State Penitentiary (WSP) in 1842 with a twenty year sentence for
harboring a runaway slave. WSP was called "The Walls of Alabama" or more
diminutively as the "Walls." Once established, the prison population during this
period was composed of white immigrants (99%) and free blacks (1%). The laws of
the time said that enslaved blacks had no freedom to infringe upon, and were
thus punished extralegally by their owners for alleged offenses.